Voices and influences
Ambrose of Milan
A Roman governor drafted into a bishop's chair before he was even baptized, who made an emperor stand outside the church door until he repented of a massacre.
Summary
This site quotes Ambrose of Milan 908 times across 50 books, and lists 0 works.
- Lived died 397.
- Quoted here most in Luke: 271 of 908.
Ambrose of Milan
- Lived
- died 397
- Tradition
- Patristic
5 of 908 quotations
Own words
Quoted in full, because Ambrose of Milan died in 397 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.
Christ, then, is the beginning of our virtue. He is the beginning of purity, who taught maidens not to look for the embraces of humanity but to yield the purity of their bodies and minds to the service of the Holy Spirit rather than to…
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a husband. Christ is the beginning of frugality, for he became poor, though he was rich. Christ is the beginning of patience, for when he was reviled, he reviled not again. When he was struck, he did not strike back. Christ is the beginning of humility, for he took the form of a servant, though in the majesty of his power he was equal with God the Father. From him each various virtue has taken its origin.For this cause, then, that we might learn these different virtues, "a son was given us, whose beginning was upon his shoulder." That "beginning" is the Lord's cross—the beginning of strong courage, wherewith a way has been opened for the holy martyrs to enter the sufferings of the holy war.
Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. BSB
Therefore, in order to call the Gentiles to the grace of his resurrection (for it is indeed a rich and fertile land that produces eternal fruits, fruits a hundred and sixty times over), he subjected his shoulder to work, subjecting himself to the cross, in…
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order to carry our sins. And so the Prophet says: His authority is on his shoulder (Isaiah 9:6), that is, the power of divinity over the bodily passion, or the cross surpassing the body. Therefore, he placed his shoulder on the plow, enduring all insults, subjected to labor in such a way that he was wounded because of our iniquities, and weakened because of our sins.
Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. BSB
Accordingly, even at that time, the cross that was to come was prefigured in sign; and at the same time that he was stripped of his tunic, that is, of the flesh he took on, he was stripped of the handsome diversity of colors that…
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represented the virtues. Therefore his tunic, that is, his flesh, was stained with blood, but not his divinity; and his enemies were able to take from him his covering of flesh but not his immortal life.
Genesis 37:23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the robe of many colors he was wearing— BSB
Moses indeed killed the Egyptian and became a fugitive from the land of Egypt, in order to avoid the tyrant of that land.
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But he would not have killed that Egyptian man before he had first killed the Egyptian man of spiritual wickedness within himself, and had renounced the luxury of regal honors, considering the reproach of Christ a greater inheritance than the treasures of Egypt.
Exodus 2:12 After looking this way and that and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. BSB
A wish is a request for blessings from God with a promise to fulfill a duty. And so, when you obtain what you have asked for, it is ungrateful to delay the promise.
Deuteronomy 23:21 If you make a vow to the LORD your God, do not be slow to keep it, because He will surely require it of you, and you will be guilty of sin. BSB
Influence, on the record
This site quotes Ambrose of Milan 908 times across 50 books.
This site’s own count of what it does with the voice
The life, in order
The life told as one accountfrom this site's record
Ambrose was born about 339 at Trier, where his father served as praetorian prefect of Gaul — one of the four or five highest offices in the Western empire. The father died young and the family went back to Rome. Ambrose was trained in law and Greek, entered the imperial service, and by about 372 was governor of Aemilia and Liguria, with his seat at Milan. Milan was then the working capital of the West, where the emperor actually lived. In 374 the bishop of Milan died, and the city split. The Arian party and the Nicene party each packed the basilica, and it looked like a riot. The governor went in to keep order and make a speech about calm. Someone in the crowd — the tradition says a child — called out, Ambrose for bishop, and both sides took it up. He was thirty-five, a career administrator, and not baptized. He tried to get out of it. He was baptized, ordained through every clerical rank in eight days, and consecrated bishop on 7 December 374. He gave his land to the church and the rest of his money to the poor, hired a priest named Simplicianus to teach him theology, and started reading Greek Christian writers no one in the Latin West had absorbed yet — Origen, Basil, Athanasius. He learned the job in public, at speed. He turned out to be extraordinary at it. He preached every Sunday and taught the congregation to sing: antiphonal hymns, two sides of the church answering each other, an Eastern practice he planted in the West. Some of the hymns are his own and are still sung. Augustine, who heard him, says he wept at the singing and could not stop. He also decided that the church was not a department of the state, and he made it stick three times. In 385 and again in 386 the Empress Justina, an Arian, demanded that one of Milan's basilicas be handed over for Arian worship, with her son the boy-emperor Valentinian II behind the order. Ambrose refused. Imperial troops surrounded the church. He and the congregation stayed inside, day and night, and he taught them the hymns to keep their courage up through the siege. He sent back the line that made the position permanent: the emperor is within the church, not above it. The troops withdrew. He pressed the same claim in 388 over Callinicum, where a mob of Christians had burned a synagogue and Theodosius ordered the bishop to pay for rebuilding it — a just order, and Ambrose fought it until the emperor gave way. It is the ugliest episode in his record and should be named as what it is. Then came Thessalonica. In 390 a riot there killed the imperial garrison commander, and Theodosius answered by turning his soldiers loose on the crowd in the circus. Something like seven thousand people were killed in a few hours. Ambrose wrote him a private letter — it survives — telling him he could not celebrate the Eucharist in his presence until he repented publicly, and that David had been a great king and still said, I have sinned. When the emperor came to the church in Milan, the bishop met him at the door and did not let him in. Theodosius, master of the Roman world, took off his imperial robes, stood among the penitents for months, and was readmitted at Christmas. No one had seen anything like it. It set a precedent the West lived under for a thousand years: there is a bar the state does not cross, and someone will be standing at the door. His other lasting work was quieter. He wrote On the Duties of the Clergy, a Christian answer to Cicero's book on duty, and treatises on the Holy Spirit and on the sacraments that carried Greek theology into Latin. And he preached the sermons that a rhetoric professor named Augustine came to hear for the technique. Ambrose showed him how to read the Old Testament without stumbling over its surface, took his confession, and baptized him at Easter 387. He kept his door open, ate almost nothing, and worked past exhaustion. He died on Good Friday, 4 April 397, and Milan filled with people who had watched a governor become a shepherd. Sources: Paulinus of Milan, Life of Saint Ambrose; Ambrose, Letters (including Letter 51 to Theodosius); Augustine, Confessions, books 5–9; Theodoret, Ecclesiastical History; Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, vol. 10.
908 quotations across 50 books
Where this voice is quoted
Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.
“Therefore the soul is not blood, because blood is of the flesh; nor is the soul a harmony, because harmony of this sort is also of the flesh; neither is the soul air, because blown breath is one thing and the soul something else.”
And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, where He placed the man He had formed.
“If paradise, then, is of such a nature that Paul alone, or one like Paul, could scarcely see it while alive and still was unable to remember whether he saw it in the body or out of the body, and moreover heard words that he…”
The name of the first river is Pishon; it winds through the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.
“"The river," we are told, "is separated into four branches." The name of one is Pishon, which encircles all the land of Hevila, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx are there.”
The name of the third river is Hiddekel; it runs along the east side of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
“The fourth river is the Euphrates, which means in Latin "fecundity and abundance of fruits." It presents a symbol of justice, the nourishment of every soul.”
Then the LORD God took the man and placed him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.
“Note, now, the person who was taken and the land where he was formed. The virtue of God, therefore, took man and breathed into him, so that man's virtue will advance and increase.”
but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”
“What is the difference between saying 'ye shall die' and 'ye shall die the death'? We ought to point out that there is nothing superfluous in the command of God. Here is my solution.”
The LORD God also said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make for him a suitable helper.”
“Still another question arises, that concerning the saying of the Lord: 'It is not good for man to be alone.'”
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
“If the union of Adam and Eve is a great mystery in Christ and in the church, it is certain that as Eve was bone of the bones of her husband and flesh of his flesh, we also are members of Christ's body, bones of…”
“You will not surely die,” the serpent told her.
“Let us learn, therefore, that the temptations of the Devil are full of guile. Of the things that he promised, scarcely one of them seems to be true.”
Then the man and his wife heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the breeze of the day, and they hid themselves from the presence…
“What does 'walking' mean in reference to God, who is everywhere? In my opinion God may be said to walk wherever throughout Scripture the presence of God is implied, when we hear that He sees all things and ' the eyes of the Lord are…”
But the LORD God called out to the man, “Where are you?”
“What then does he mean by "Adam, where art thou?" Does he not mean "in what circumstance" are you; not, "in what place?" It is therefore not a question but a reproof.”
Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” “The serpent deceived me,” she replied, “and I ate.”
“That fault is pardonable which is followed by an admission of guilt. The woman, therefore, is not to be despaired of, who did not keep silent before God, but who preferred to admit her sin-the woman on whom was passed a sentence that was salutary.”
And to Adam He said: “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat, cursed…
“The two sentences seem to have a certain similarity, yet in that similarity there is a great difference.”
Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
“There, too, is that distinction between the serpent who is said to eat the earth and Adam, to whom God said: ' You shall eat in sadness the herbs of the field.' [ Gen 3:18 ] We may note here a certain gradation.”
“Not so!” replied the LORD. “If anyone slays Cain, then Cain will be avenged sevenfold.”
“Indeed, it was not without reason that the mark was set upon Cain, that no one might kill him. Thus it was indicated that evil is not destroyed or removed from the earth.”
When Enosh was 90 years old, he became the father of Kenan. And after he had become the father of Kenan, Enosh lived 815 years and had other sons and…
“For it is the mark of a wise man to separate oneself from the pleasures of the flesh, to elevate the soul, and to withdraw from the body; for this is truly to recognize oneself as a human being.”
So the LORD said, “I will blot out man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—every man and beast and crawling creature and bird of the air—for…
“'I will wipe from the face of the Earth,' He said, 'man, beasts, crawling creatures, and birds of the sky' (Gen. VI, 7). What harm had the irrational creatures done?”
But I will establish My covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you.
“And therefore, since all earthly things perish in the flood, but the just alone remains forever, it is said to him: I will establish my covenant with thee; for he is the heir of divine grace, he is the heavenly possessor of the inheritance, the…”
You are to take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate; a pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and…
“Now let us consider by what means Noah commanded the clean animals to enter the ark, seven and seven, male and female (Gen. VII, 2): but of the unclean animals, two and two, so that the seed may be nourished in all the earth.”
But God remembered Noah and all the animals and livestock that were with him in the ark.
“And the Lord brought a spirit upon the earth, and the water ceased (Genesis VIII, 1). I do not think this is said in such a way that we should understand the spirit as the name for wind.”
And surely I will require the life of any man or beast by whose hand your lifeblood is shed.
“Indeed, I will require your blood, and the blood of your souls from all beasts, and from the hand of man (Gen. IX, 5).”
From there Abram moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east.
“Where there is Bethel, that is, the house of God, there is also the altar. Where there is the altar, there is also the calling on the name of God. It is not by chance that he made such great progress.”
As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “Look, I know that you are a beautiful woman, and when the Egyptians see you, they will…
“There came a famine, and so he went to Egypt. He knew that in Egypt the dissipation of youth was widespread, characterized by lust, impudent desires and unrestrained passions.”
The LORD, however, afflicted Pharaoh and his household with severe plagues because of Abram’s wife Sarai.
“This passage is a great witness and demonstration of the necessity of maintaining chastity, exhorting everyone to show himself chaste, not to long for the bed of another and not to seduce the wife of another, counting on the hope of not being discovered and…”
Now Lot, who was traveling with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents.
“It remains to be seen if Lot too, his nephew, was rich as one who belonged to the same family. But Scripture says only that he had many cattle. In fact, the text reads, "Lot also, who went with Abraham, had flocks, herds and tents."”